By: HENRY WADSWORTH
LONGFELLOW
What the Heart of the Young Man
Said to The Psalmist:
Tell me not, in mournful numbers
Life is but an empty dream!
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.
Life is real! Life is earnest
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust
returnest
Was not spoken of the soul
Not enjoyment, and not
sorrow
Is our destined end or way;
But to act that each
tomorrow
Find us farther than today
Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout
and brave
Still, like muffled drums, are
beating
Funeral marches to the grave
In the world’s broad field of
battle,
In the bivouac of Life
Be not like dumb, driven cattle
Be a hero in the strife
Trust no Future, howe’er
pleasant
Let the dead Past bury its dead
Act, _ act in the living present
Heart within, and God o’erhead
Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time
Footprints, that perhaps
another
Sailing o’er life’s solemn main
A forlorn and shipwrecked
brother
Seeing, shall take heart again
Let us, then, be up and doing
With a heart for any fate
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait